06/09/2014

I have no sympathy for the efforts of gay-rights activists to smear and intimidate Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia, perhaps our most prominent scholar of law and religion, for the sin of speaking his mind. A law student and a recent graduate, spurred on by the advocacy group GetEqual, have filed freedom-of-information requests for his telephone and travel records, in what they describe as an effort at dialogue about what they consider the harmful effects of his views.

This description is implausible. If they wanted to talk to him, they could knock on his door. The effort is aimed at intimidation. They want him to shut up. ...

Laycock has gained support from across the spectrum, including several professors and commentators who disagree with him on the constitutional boundaries of religious freedom. It would be nice to imagine that practitioners of this modern McCarthyism will slink away in shame. Probably they won't. They have too much in common with the McCarthyites of the 1950s who sent my great-uncle to prison. For those who prefer a world in which nobody holds unfashionable views, intimidation will always be preferable to argument.

Comments

I have no sympathy for the efforts of gay-rights activists to smear and intimidate Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia, perhaps our most prominent scholar of law and religion, for the sin of speaking his mind. A law student and a recent graduate, spurred on by the advocacy group GetEqual, have filed freedom-of-information requests for his telephone and travel records, in what they describe as an effort at dialogue about what they consider the harmful effects of his views.

This description is implausible. If they wanted to talk to him, they could knock on his door. The effort is aimed at intimidation. They want him to shut up. ...

Laycock has gained support from across the spectrum, including several professors and commentators who disagree with him on the constitutional boundaries of religious freedom. It would be nice to imagine that practitioners of this modern McCarthyism will slink away in shame. Probably they won't. They have too much in common with the McCarthyites of the 1950s who sent my great-uncle to prison. For those who prefer a world in which nobody holds unfashionable views, intimidation will always be preferable to argument.